Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers | Hacker News Reader

Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers

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> printed in red, was the Russian word секрет. Secret.

That'd be "секретно". "Cекрет" is what pirates print on their treasure maps in kindergarten :)

Which is a nice way of saying that Greg Miller is putting on airs without running his work by a native speaker.

Either that or the maps really had that word printed on them, for whatever reason.

Hmmm? "Cекрет" is a noun. "Cекретно" is an adverb. Why is "Cекрет" inappropriate here?

"Секрет" is more a social thing. Confidential information of bigger entities like government or business will be called "тайна".

Weird that Russians wouldn't use a native root for such a basic concept. Plenty of Slavic languages have variations on "tajna." Maybe it's some bureaucratic term using a Westernized root to be fashionable.

> "tajna."

That would be a noun, in other words, a particular state secret. You'd say "Eto gosudarstvenaya tayna" - this is a state secret.

But in English secret is both an adjective/adverb and noun, in other languages there might be two different words for it.

So it would be "secretno"(ru) = "secret"(en) and you might say "Eto sovershenno secretno"(ru) = "This is top secret"(en).

Of course Russian has the word «тайна». It's the generic term for hidden, classified, protected, secret, or unknown information. And «государственная тайна» would be "state secret".

But the stamp on the maps wasn't just for indicating that they are some sort of state secret. It was for indicating the exact level of secrecy in the Russian classification system.

Those levels are «особой важности» (literally: of special importance), «совершенно секретно» (lit.: completely secret) and «секретно» (lit.: secret). And in US government terminology, they approximately correspond to "top secret", "secret", and "confidential", although the boundaries between the levels are defined somewhat differently.

In Russian Empire the imperial court mostly spoke French so lower classes, aspiring to sound more like nobles, borrowed a whole lot of French words. Because of this many Slavic words now sound archaic or pretensions to a Russian speaker. E.g. тайна in Russian is more like 'enigma', definitely not 'classified/secret'.

Thanks for this comment, this is exactly what I was wondering. It's similar to how Croatian adopted mostly English words for computer hardware, and the attempt by the government to push Slavic-rooted replacements ended up sounding silly.

> E.g. тайна in Russian is more like 'enigma', definitely not 'classified/secret'.

How about "государственная тайна" then?

It's an established idiom, same as военная тайна or, even better, тайный советник. Words that make up an idiom do not carry the same meaning outside one and vice versa.

I have a colleague who flew relief aid missions into Russia in the 70's and 80's, and said the Soviet civilian maps were just terrible - they'd show roads in the wrong places and didn't show secret military bases, etc. He figured this out after accidentally flying over a Soviet army base in what is today eastern Ukraine... and then talked his East German military connection into getting him a copy of the military maps.

As a former Soviet geodesist and forest inventory specialist, I must tell that military 1:50 000 maps are extremely accurate. What was intentionally skewed are civil 1:250 000 maps. The highest resolution and the best accuracy have been provided for so called forestry maps (1:10000).

Wow, that's fascinating. Would you happen to have a website somewhere that documents your experiences? I'm really curious.

With all respect, I have to redirect you to public libraries in Russia or for example Latvia. There was no Internet before 1991. Easy prey is 1: 2 500 000 school political atlas of 1980. There is no city of Daugavpils on the map of Latvia (2nd largest in Latvia), but smaller towns are mapped. Why? Daugavpils was military important.

I can hardly believe it. a map from 1983 atlas clearly shows it: http://samlib.ru/img/b/balxzinabalxzin_i_a/mappointstreangle..., and that's just 1 to 10,000,000 map

Well, over here at 1:20 000 000 Lithuania has small Klaipeda, but Latvia has no Daugavpils. http://goo.gl/f2ABiy . It has another explanation when relates to 1:20M (ports depicted for small republics). But in my school atlas of the 9th form my home city was absent too on a larger scale map. Also example - Lithiania has Klaipeda, Latvia has Liepaja, Russia has Velikiye Luki (rather small one), Belarus has Vitebsk, but no Daugavpils in Latvia too - http://goo.gl/VoGtvl.

Actually I keep aset of Soviet military maps for Afghanistan. If you are interested, We can make some field experiments if you are ready to get to Bagram with Trimble GPS. It is now controlled by USAF, so you can feel certainly protected.

Ah, sorry, I was more interested in your biographical experiences, not so much the topographical details. :-) It's just that I don't know many who have had a job like yours, and in USSR.

What would be the motivation for providing more accurate forestry maps?

since I made these, I can answer. You have to accurately account boundaries of forest lots in order to correctly perform operations there. Every lot had individual economic purpose and program of development. There were 10-year plans, so basically every 10 years you produce a new set of maps.

> As a former Soviet geodesist and forest inventory specialist,

Well that takes the cake for the day.

"flew relief aid missions into Russia in the 70's and 80's" does not compute. Soviet Union had a whole branch of military dedicated to anti-aircraft warfare, meant to stop such things.

But yuh, the civilian maps were terrible - as the article describes.

Why would they show secret military bases on civilian maps for non Russian solders? Sounds reasonable to me, they are secret for a reason, no? Am I missing something?

Civilian maps were intentionally distorted. In various places the details were completely wrong - for example, smaller roads near some Baltic coast beaches (e.g. "potential conflict/landing sites") were simply drawn with no relation to reality to fill in the space with something superficially resembling the density of roads but with different angles/locations/everything; the locals knew to not rely on this and for construction/planning purposes you used different maps than the civilians.

If you are interested in wartime mapmaking and are in the UK, I highly recommend a visit to Hughenden

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hughenden/

And of course it's free for NT members :-)

Guy’s company, Omnimap, was one of the first to import Soviet military maps to the West.

Import is a huge stretch. More like stealing state secrets (and now admitting to it publicly?).

You are quite right.

Technically, buying them - they were 'acquired' by the mentioned map making companies. TBF said state secrets kinda fell through when the USSR fell apart.

Can you steal from a state that doesn't even exist at the time?

Not sure if this applies to the maps in question, but legal rights (and obligations) are handed down to successor country/countries. International treaties, debts and everything. Even Olympic medals I believe.

Yes you can, states that don't exist anymore have other states that inherit both their treasures, secrets, copyrighted works as well as debts. I understand that Russia is that state in general. The issue is complicated in case of ex Soviet Republics presumably.

But I would guess you also can't just storm into Mosfilm or Lenfilm (movie production studios) and start copying all their movies made during the Soviet times and selling them for profit.

Umm, in pretty much every country except Russia it is completely legal to violate Russian state secrets, and in pretty much any country other than USA it's legal to violate USA state secrets. The international buyer should be completely in the clear.

Furthermore, it's very likely that the seller also is completly legal - as long as it's outside of Russia but one of ex-USSR republics, their new legal systems generally don't prohibit distributing USSR state secrets, only documents that are classified by their own new authorities.

So and where are IP rights of the still living former Soviet topographers? Is Mapstor paying royalty to specialists still operating at the 5th Cartography Enterprise in Minsk? British have been pirates for ages. Old habits never die.

Presumably if there were any IP rights at all (what with it being a Communist state), they were assigned to the USSR government or, like products of the US government, are born into the public domain.

So, you mean everything Snowden released is also public domain? Because those maps were classified, didn't you read?

IANAL, but my understanding is that all (with a few caveats) works created by US government employees are, in fact, in the public domain but that doesn't mean they can be made available publicly without restriction.

http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html

The fact that U.S. Government works are not protected under the U.S. Copyright Law does not create a requirement that all U.S. Government works be made publicly available without restriction (See Gellman, Robert M. Twin Evils: Government Copyright and Copyright-like Controls Over Government Information. Syracuse Law Review, 999, 1995. ADA394923). See Pfeiffer v. Central Intelligence Agency 62, 60 F.3d 861 (D.C. Cir. 1995). Federal laws and agency policies govern the public release of U.S. Government information. Examples include Executive Order 13292, Classified National Security Information , OMB Circular A-130,63 Management of Federal Information Resources, Department of Defense Directive 5230.9 Clearance of DoD Information for Public Release, April 9, 1996, ASD (PA) and DOD Instruction 5230.29 Security and Policy Review of DoD Information for Public Release.

Who the fuck are you? An astroturfer for the US gov?

I like that. Is the US law universally applied in this part of the Galaxy?

You seem to be very aggressive and politicized on this topic (why did you throw in that totally gratuitous aside about the British always being pirates?). You might want to consider your comments more carefully.

oh I am. My mother in law spent her entire youth drawing that exact maps.

What? The USSR was one of the creators of the framework IP protection conventions. Russia is legal successor of the USSR and paid its foreign debts by the way. So what Mapstor does is plain ripping off Russian IP, since maps in question were produced after 1971. UPD: and Belarusian IP rights too. To be exact - legal department of the 5th Cartography Enterprise must file DMCA complaint agaist Mapstor and alike in such a situation. Please do not think you can violate IP property of the USSR. otherwise, your own heir will feel uneasy when such best ripping practices will be applied to them. Inherited property is still a property, isn't it?

So, then it was exactly as I said: it's either the government or the public's - not the original mapmakers like your mother-in-law. In pretty much no circumstance will the copyright on military maps ever belong to the original person who made them; such things are almost always going to be for-hire works. (Why on earth would any government or organization hire people for the extremely expensive and laborious work of making global maps and give the copyright to them?)

If the governments still care, let them deal with it. It's no business of yours, nor do you need to white-knight on their behalf and throw in irrelevant arguments & gratuitious nationalist slurs.

Looks like you know little about copyright law and how it applies. Very strange, you protect clear violators. Guys bought maps illegally, illegally exported classified material and are trading(!) classified information. Please, let me decide what is my business and what is not, thank you very much.

Copyright of USSR-made works is not public domain; tracing the owner is tricky at times, but [obviously] works where the copyright inheritor is hard to trace are pretty much the opposite of public domain - you're not allowed to copy w/o permission, even if that permission is tricky to obtain.

The "made by gov't -> public domain" is an USA-specific detail that doesn't apply in most other places.

If specific people owned the copyright, then it's as usual for any other works; if a specific USSR institution owned the copyright, then the ownership will be determined by the early 1990ies transition/reorganization laws and contracts; if 'USSR' owned it, then it's owned by Russia afterwards, not public domain.

Very true. Thank you, You saved me from explaining that to guys below in this thread.

Well, copyright would protect only making new copies and redistributing them, but it definitely is legal to resell the physical maps that were made by, e.g., 5th Cartography Enterprise in 1980ies, distributed throughout USSR in rather large quantities (the access was controlled, but there were many of those maps made) and then inherited by various ex-USSR countries and enterprises.

No royalty or permission is required when [re]selling existing copies of copyrighted works, copyright protects only making copies.

With exception to scales better than 1:50000 maps, I am afraid these are again classified in Russia. And there are these famous regulations applied - http://goo.gl/OF5bSn . Basically everything that has relief from 1:50000 is classified. However you can still have 1:20000 electronic relief of Russia from torrents, if you don't legally care.

Off topic: is anyone else annoyed by those background-fixed image sections? Because the height of the section is bigger than the height of the viewport while scrolling past those sections it appears for a moment that the page stopped responding; the effect is especially prominent on wide screens.

”Anyone old enough to have lived through those paranoid days of mutually assured destruction will find it a bit disturbing to see familiar hometown streets and landmarks labeled in Cyrillic script.”

I was only a child during the Cold War, but yes, a few years ago when I saw one of these Soviet maps of the Swedish Tiveden forest, it felt quite strange. The quality of the map was indeed magnificent.

I often struggle to find even the most basic information in online maps. Worse, when I am in a rural area and have no service I find no service at all. I've thought recently about keeping some paper maps in my car for such occasions, might have to look into getting copies of some of these.

Get OSMAnd.

In the UK on bing maps you can view the OS maps, they are probably the most detailed online maps.

There aren't many things which the British do really, really well, but the Ordnance Survey is one of them.

Bing have a license, but it's geolocked so non-UK people don't see the OS maps. streetmap.co.uk is where I go; the actual website is terrible but they have the OS maps in 1:25000 and 1:50000 (and some of the non-topographic smaller scale maps):

http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=191074&y=840453&z=0&sv=iv54...

Bear in mind that that map is suppose to be 4cm to a kilometre. On my screen it's about three times too big.

After growing up with these maps (we were even taught how to read them at school!), visiting other countries and having to struggle with tourist maps is deeply painful.

Why people don't use USSR instead of Russia? or Soviet Russia?

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